Spring Hill College commencement set for Saturday under the oaks

View full sizeFILE - More than 300 graduates made the historic walk down the "Avenue of the Oaks" at Spring Hill College's commencement exercises Saturday May 7, 2011. Patrick J. Balthrop Sr., President and Chief Executive Officer of Luminex Corporation and a 1979 alumus of Spring Hill College was keynote speaker during the event. (Press-Register/Victor Calhoun)

MOBILE, Alabama -- Jacqueline Dunsworth won’t be taking the traditional route after receiving her diploma from Spring Hill College on Saturday.

Instead of starting a 9-to-5 job, she’ll go home to Nova Scotia to help take care of her sister’s children and then head out to serve in the Jesuit Volunteer Corps.

She’ll learn her volunteer duties and assignment on May 15.

“I think it’s important for people who have the ability to do it,” she said of volunteer work. “There’s a lot of need.”

Like Spring Hill the corps is also associated with the Jesuits, a Catholic order of priests and brothers. Dunsworth, 21, will be among 300 graduates participating in Saturday’s commencement exercises.

Her degree is in studio art, which she said that she “just kind of stumbled into.”

Volunteers in the Jesuit corps receive a small stipend, live together and take part in group prayer and religious retreats.

Dunsworth ended up at Spring Hill by meeting students from the Mobile college who were on immersion trips to Nicaragua. That’s where Dunsworth went to high school.

Dunsworth lived in Nova Scotia until she was 7. Then, her father, a longtime lawyer, went on a service trip to Nicaragua in 1997 and “came back a changed man,” she said.

Her parents began work for Habitat for Humanity International. Soon after, the family packed up and moved to Argentina.

She said that it’s going to be difficult leaving Spring Hill. “I feel like I’ve gotten closer to a lot of people I never would have interacted with,” she said.

After working a year in the Jesuit corps, she might go back to college to seek a teaching certificate, she said.

“I don’t know where that would take me in terms of geography,” said Dunsworth. “That’s the story of my life — going somewhere new and making it my home.”